Arsh
Liking YTtalk
Alright. I know a lot of people have trouble coming up with ideas about short films or sketches or vlogs and stuff like that. And this is aimed for at the people who do SUBTLE COMEDY short films [not slapstick stuff], but I guess everyone can get some tidbit of information or another. Anyways, I basically have this "laser-beam" theory about coming up with ideas. (What I'm sharing is more of a beginning phase and with a bit of practice, you can apply this to almost all situations)
So, here's how it goes.
1) Next time you're upset at anything or anyone, note it down in some notebook, on your laptop, typewriter, iPad etc.
2) Take whatever you wrote down and make the topic/heading. (So, this is basically situational comedy in a loose sense of the word)
3) This is where you need your creative juices, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I personally don't believe there is a systematic approach to this step. But, here's my strategy. I take that topic, and I basically point a laser beam at it and try to rip it apart into many sections. For example, construction in the middle of the day pisses the out of me. So, one day, I was waiting for my bus and my bus was late due to this goddamn construction project. Therefore, I wrote down all the factors that could potentially be the cause of the construction project being executed during rush hour rather than another time. After coming up with about 5 or 6 reasons, I narrowed it down to all of the ones where there was most room for comedy.
4) After you have these reasons about why you hate something you hate, dig into those reasons. This is where I take my creative freedom and bring in my exaggeration elements. So, the reasons themselves are grounded to reality. However, the approach to those reasons is exaggerated. For example, in the construction one, I decided that the mayor just won't give a construction company the permit to construct anything UNLESS they do it during rush hour. The construction company's manager is trying to convince the mayor that he allows them to do the construction near midnight, but the mayor insists that if he wants his permit, the construction will happen at 4 PM. Now, the concept itself may not be that funny, but I hope you can see that a lot of funny situations could arise from one phone call between the construction company's manager and the mayor.
And I think a lot of poor comedy comes from poor situations which leave nowhere to go with the writing.
If you found the thread to be of any value, I may continue to do a few more. Hopefully, as this is my first "major" post here, these threads will start improving more and more.
So, here's how it goes.
1) Next time you're upset at anything or anyone, note it down in some notebook, on your laptop, typewriter, iPad etc.
2) Take whatever you wrote down and make the topic/heading. (So, this is basically situational comedy in a loose sense of the word)
3) This is where you need your creative juices, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I personally don't believe there is a systematic approach to this step. But, here's my strategy. I take that topic, and I basically point a laser beam at it and try to rip it apart into many sections. For example, construction in the middle of the day pisses the out of me. So, one day, I was waiting for my bus and my bus was late due to this goddamn construction project. Therefore, I wrote down all the factors that could potentially be the cause of the construction project being executed during rush hour rather than another time. After coming up with about 5 or 6 reasons, I narrowed it down to all of the ones where there was most room for comedy.
4) After you have these reasons about why you hate something you hate, dig into those reasons. This is where I take my creative freedom and bring in my exaggeration elements. So, the reasons themselves are grounded to reality. However, the approach to those reasons is exaggerated. For example, in the construction one, I decided that the mayor just won't give a construction company the permit to construct anything UNLESS they do it during rush hour. The construction company's manager is trying to convince the mayor that he allows them to do the construction near midnight, but the mayor insists that if he wants his permit, the construction will happen at 4 PM. Now, the concept itself may not be that funny, but I hope you can see that a lot of funny situations could arise from one phone call between the construction company's manager and the mayor.
And I think a lot of poor comedy comes from poor situations which leave nowhere to go with the writing.
If you found the thread to be of any value, I may continue to do a few more. Hopefully, as this is my first "major" post here, these threads will start improving more and more.